Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the dedication, commitment and, above all, the actions of Deputy Billy Kelleher, who has achieved a significant public service by providing for this debate. The motion we have placed before the Dáil boils down to the assertion of two simple factual statements. Our ambulance services are under-resourced and, as a consequence, we are placing people's lives at risk. The only appropriate response to these facts is for the Minister of State and her colleagues in Cabinet to consider resourcing the ambulance service appropriately. Instead, we and the public are being presented with a Government counter motion that one could only argue is a work of fiction.

I offer an example from my constituency, Galway East. In 2012, a new ambulance base was built at a cost of €1.7 million and opened in Tuam to service north County Galway. As welcome as this was, the issue of staffing arrangements in the base continued to be a source of great concern to my community. We take the word of paramedics over the word of the HSE senior managers and officials in the Department. I maintain front-line staff provide a great picture of the reality of what is taking place in the service. The base in Tuam is only staffed on an ad hocbasis from Galway City and, sometimes, Ballinasloe. For the most part it is only covered by a two to three days per week, 12 hour roster. On certain weeks there are no rostered staff there. This is relevant since the response time to Tuam from Galway city is 30 minutes on a good day. On a bad day it can be between 40 to 50 minutes before an ambulance arrives. For example, response times to Glenamaddy, an area of north County Galway, can take up to 50 minutes on a good day. Sometimes, Galway city is unable to respond and therefore an ambulance is dispatched from Loughrea. The response time for the Tuam area can be up to one hour, and this is not an acceptable situation. It makes a mockery of the 19 minutes target quoted in the Government counter motion. The Government has referred to the strategic deployment of ambulances. In previous responses, the Government used to refer to dynamic deployment, but the spin seems to have been upgraded and it is simply not working.

There is no talk today of strategic deployment to address the situation in Tuam and north County Galway. One paramedic put it to me that while paramedics were well-trained and capable of delivering high quality care, often patients do not need a paramedic carer but rather to get to hospital as quickly as possible. They need to get towards a centre of excellence at maximum speed.

In the current situation, this Government is riding its luck in rural Ireland. Last year, only one in three people with a life-threatening condition were responded to inside the target times. In my area, this has been evident in several high profile cases. This time last year, I put forward suggestions under a Topical Issues debate to facilitate providing for staffing levels on a 24 hour, seven day basis for the existing ambulance services in County Galway on the basis of providing a full-time 5/7 or 7/7 roster for Tuam. In response, the Minister of State said at the time that the proposition was eminently practical. More than one and a half years has passed since that eminently practical proposition but nothing has happened in respect of the staffing levels in Tuam, and north County Galway continues to be at risk. It is considered a blackspot area with respect to coverage.

I call on the Cabinet colleagues of the Minister of State to stop playing Russian roulette with my community. This is not fiction and no doubt the counter motion is not based in reality. I call on the Minister of State to consider carefully how she could provide for an adequate level of resources for Tuam and north County Galway. It is inexplicable that we have a situation whereby €1.7 million of capital spend took place in 2010-2011 and yet there is no staffing provision for a roster. It is not acceptable that people have to wait up to one hour or an hour and a half to have the services of an emergency medical technician and access to the general hospital. I call on the Minister of State to act on this. The situation is a source of great concern and I call on the Minister of State to respond to us in that respect.

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